The Boro Aesthetic

The Japanese, in the high moment of neoliberal capitalism that was the 1980s through the 1990s, emerged as a dominant economic force on the world market and were the precursors to the rise of the Asian Tiger economies. The four nations that comprised the Asian Tigers, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, became economically prosperous because, starting in the 1960s at the very moment that manufacturing was declining the West, they rapidly industrialized, as well as developing a prosperous export economy.

That the Japanese are, at least in Stuckey’s account, “salivating” at the prospect of buying up the kind of machinery that was at optimal performance in the 1940s, has the effect of confronting us with a historic event. That Japanese industry is “salivating” at being able to acquire Morse Industries’ machinery does not mark a simple return to (although, as we know, there is no such thing as an uncomplicated turning-back-to; nostalgia is a complex phenomenon) nor the blind determination to turn away from a historic catastrophe; it marks, rather, the return of the event that was nuclear disaster—Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the light of what the Morse Industries cranes (the “relic” of the industrial era) reanimates, the memory of death that it brings once again to life, Stuckey’s bland assertion—“it costs too much”—assumes a meaning entirely beyond the range of his, or, for that matter, postindustrial capital’s, thinking.

Stuckey’s easy dismissal of a mode of production that was historically vital in the Allied victory over the Axis powers takes on a far more cynical and historically sinister meaning. How are we to assign value to the lives destroyed in that war, to the planetary destruction visited upon the people of the region, the effects of which continue to be felt today in Japan? Can we put a number on that? Or, in terms of costs, what are we to make Robert Oppenheimer’s regret about his signal role in the creation of the A-Bomb? How are we to ever stop looking on those ruins? The “burnt-out ends of a smoky day” that will not end? The “burnt-out ends of the smoky day” of all “smoky days?” A “smoky day” that had about it the distinct prospect of being an “end day?” The end day to end all days.

At the very least, we know that the ruin that is the toxic aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki must always be looked upon, must be turned to, especially in those moments when it appears to be slipping from our immediate view; that moment when it is no longer located at forefront of our thinking. But the machinic, economic ruin(s) that have nothing but disposable economic value to Stuckey (and to Edward, too) ignores the creativity that emanated from that violent ruin—the defeat of Japan in 1945. In the wake of that defeat, in light of that ecological horror, in the aftermath of an economy left in tatters by war, the Japanese set about rebuilding their economy. And, in at least one way, the Japanese produced their own creativity out of the ruins of ideological, economic, and political destruction.

Even before that moment when the Japanese economy, especially through electronics and the production of fuel-efficient cars, was coming to global prominence, a singular aesthetic emerged in the world of Japanese fashion. Even before the coming to prominence of that couture aesthetic we know today as boro culture, there was a signal stirring on the Japanese fashion front.

W. David Marx, a Japanese-based American critic of Japanese fashion, describes the scarcity of material with which to make new clothes in postwar Japan. The “postwar government,” Marx writes,

campaigned for frugality and moderation. Between the U.S. stopping all commercial imports of textiles and garments to Japan and a rationing system set up in 1947, few could buy or even make new clothing. The only fresh source of shirts and pants came from boxes of used garments collected in American charity drives, most of which ended up in the black markets.1

In an economy where new raw materials were at a premium, the Japanese returned to an earlier mode of cloth making, what we know today as boro clothing or boro culture, as some might prefer. Boro culture is, arguably, best apprehended as the art of making-do with what is at hand. As we know from W. David Marx, the Japanese clothing industry was without access to reams of new cloth, thanks to the “U.S. stopping all commercial imports of textiles and garments to Japan.” Out of resilience as much as the hard truth of having no alternative, the Japanese clothing industry made do with scraps of old cloth, the remnants of old bales of wool, cutting up old garments (some of them no doubt acquired on the “black market”) to either repurpose them or to make entirely new garments.

Distinct about the turn to boro culture was its obsession with “Ivy League” American fashion, what W. David Marx presents as—and takes as the title of his book—“Ametora, the Japanese slang abbreviation of ‘American traditional.’”2 Equally resonant, in the terms of our argument, is that this turn to America as a model for postwar fashion was that—especially salient in a culture as patriarchal as Japan’s—its first practitioners were neither men nor “respectable” Japanese women. Instead, it was the “Pan Pan girls”: “Prewar, Western fashion and custom had entered society through the male elite and trickled down. In a topsy-turvy social reversal, the first to wear American-style clothing in postwar Japan were women—and prostitutes at that.”3 The “Pan Pan girls” “wore brightly colored American dresses and platform heels, with a signature kerchief tied around their necks. They permed their hair, caked on heavy makeup, and wore red lipstick and red nail polish.”4 Vivian in Tokyo, circa 1948. With a miniskirt instead of a “brightly colored dress,” with no “caked on heavy makeup,” and with those “platform heels” replaced by stilettos. But never quite giving up on the dream of the glorious cocktail dress fit for that upscale polo game where PEFs conduct their business while the riders battle it out on their ponies. Edward can, for example, at a polo match pretty much close a deal or instruct Stuckey to get a senator on the phone to stymie a competitor’s efforts to remain solvent.

At first, this mode of clothes-making was regarded as a historical necessity. And, because boro culture recalled a moment before Japan’s rise as an imperial power and then, in the wake of the war, its rapid industrialization, it was frowned upon, mostly because it was a reminder of the nation’s military defeat. However, from the 1980s through 2000, with the founding of companies such as “Engineered Garments” (Daiki Suzuki, founder of the fashion empire that is Nepenthes; a brand known as “EG” to its loyalists), “Beams +” (Hideki Mizobata), “orSlow” (Ichiro Nakatsu), “Visvim” (Hiroki Nakamura, founded in 2000), and, my favorite, Kapital (founded in 1984 by Toshikiyo Hirata, who now works together with his son, Kiro, in Okayama, Japan’s denim capital), boro culture became a hot fashion item. Kapital, orSlow, Visvim are now among the go-to brands for hipsters the world over.5

Even as boro has evolved into a distinctly Japanese and internationally celebrated mode of fashion, it remains unabashed in its appropriation of US culture. The foundation of this aesthetic is, as we said, American preppy. For boro culture, Yale is the go-to Ivy League model. So, think postwar Ivy League,6 button-down shirts, khakis, sweatshirts, hoodies, lettered sweaters, lettered varsity jackets, penny loafers; think Ralph Lauren’s Polo shirts, sweater vests, chinos (like JFK and the era of Camelot). All of this often adorned with eye-catching patches (what was historically necessary now being paid homage to; out of historical fidelity comes cutting-edge fashion) and maybe a little on the baggy side (EG is especially good at this), when it is made in Japan. But today boro culture is also inspired by skateboarding, think southern California board shorts, loose garments, and of course, US street culture—think oversized garments such as T-shirts, sweatshirts, baggy jeans, and baseball hats (baseball hats and trucker hats made to look “worn”; that is, when they’re precisely the kind of hat that is so reimagined as to ensure that it will never be encountered at truck stop on the I80 corridor).

There is also a decided nod to the great American outdoors; again think Ralph Lauren, but this time his rugged Colorado (Vail) and American Southwest (borrowed from the Indigenous people, the Diné/Navajo in particular) aesthetic as well as an homage to American workwear. When it comes to workwear, a brand such as Carhartt enjoys a certain preeminence; collaboration between workwear brands made hip (rebranded) as well as sports/leisure wear seems to be an ever-expanding undertaking. (Recently, Carhartt seems to be a brand with whom many hip Japanese designers now collaborate. But Carhartt is by no means the only brand to enjoy the attention of Japanese designers.) Of course, sneaker culture is huge, so Adidas, Nike, New Balance, recognizing the potential for increasing market share, have long since jumped eagerly on the bandwagon. But at the heart of all these brands such as Kapital and Visvim is US denim. And when it comes to jeans, San Francisco Levis’ denim is the undisputed master of the boro imagination. Prominently located on the cover of W. David Marx’s Ametora is a pair of high-fashion Levis.

The ethos of boro culture in its industrialist form is what we are confronting in Stuckey’s haste to dispose of “cranes” to the “salivating Japanese.” The relentless drive for profit must not be allowed to obscure the ways in which that object, imbued with the ideology of wartime death, reveals itself as a creative force. That is, it shows itself as the immanence of ongoing modes of cultural exchange and appropriation, opening onto a materialist repurposing. In short, it is an aesthetic creativity that is massively indebted to historical violence and, in the critical moment, a creativity that is indebted to the lack of a viable economic alternative.